Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [3]
My favourites were the pictures of protesters occupying the building on 4 December 1989, squatting in the corridors with the surprise still on their faces, as if half-expecting to be asked to leave. As they entered the building, the Stasi guards had asked to see the demonstrators’ identity cards, in a strange parody of the control they were, at that very moment, losing. The demonstrators, in shock, obediently pulled their cards from their wallets. Then they seized the building.
Large and small mysteries were accounted for when the files were opened. Not least, perhaps, the tics of the ordinary man in the street. This document was on display:
SIGNALS FOR OBSERVATION
1. Watch Out! Subject is coming
—touch nose with hand or handkerchief
2. Subject is moving on, going further, or overtaking
—stroke hair with hand, or raise hat briefly
3. Subject standing still
—lay one hand against back, or on the stomach
4. Observing Agent wishes to be terminate observation because cover threatened
—bend and retie shoelaces
5. Subject returning
—both hands against back or on stomach
6. Observing Agent wishes to speak with Team Leader or other Observing Agents
—take out briefcase or equivalent and examine contents.
I pictured the street ballet of the deaf and dumb: agents signalling to each other from corner to corner: stroking noses, tummies, backs and hair, tying and untying shoelaces, lifting their hats to strangers and riffling through papers—a choreography for very nasty scouts.
Towards the back of the building, three rooms housed Stasi artefacts in glass cases. There was a box of fake wigs and moustaches alongside small tubes of glue to affix them. There were women’s vinyl handbags with built-in microphones disguised as flower petals in a studded decoration. There were bugs that had been implanted in apartment walls and a pile of mail that never reached the west. One of the envelopes had a child’s handwriting on it in coloured pencil—a different colour for each letter of the address.
One glass case contained nothing but empty jars. I was staring at it when a woman approached me. She looked like a female version of Luther, except she was beautiful. She was fiftyish, with high cheekbones, and a direct gaze. She looked friendly, but she also looked as if she knew I had been making mental ridicule of a regime which required its members to sign pledges of allegiance that looked like marriage certificates, confiscated children’s birthday cards to their grandparents and typed up inane protocols at desks beneath calendars of large-breasted women. This was Frau Hollitzer, who runs the museum.
Frau Hollitzer explained to me that the jars in front of us were ‘smell samples’. The Stasi had developed a quasi-scientific method, ‘smell sampling’, as a way to find criminals. The theory was that we all have our own identifying odour, which we leave on everything we touch. These smells can be captured and, with the help of trained sniffer dogs, compared to find a match. The Stasi would take its dogs and jars to a location where they suspected an illegal meeting had occurred, and see if the dogs could pick up the scents of the people whose essences were captured in the jars.
Mostly, smell samples were collected surreptitiously. The Stasi might break into someone’s apartment and take a piece of clothing worn close to the skin, often underwear. Alternatively, a ‘suspect’ would be brought in under some pretext for questioning, and the vinyl seat he or she had sat on would be wiped afterward with a cloth. The pieces of stolen clothing, or the cloth, would then be placed in a sealed jar. The containers looked like jam bottling jars. A label read: ‘Name: Herr [Name]. Time: 1 Hour. Object: Worker’s Underpants.’
When the citizens of Leipzig entered this building, they found a large collection of smell samples. Then the jars disappeared. It was not until June 1990 that they